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Monday, May 16, 2016

Romania: New coin honors antisemitic bank governor

The US Embassy in Romania on Friday criticized the country’s central bank for releasing a coin bearing the image of a former bank governor who it said actively promoted anti-Semitism.

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The embassy called the bank’s decision to honor Mihail Manoilescu, the former governor of the National Bank of Romania, “disappointing.” In a statement, it said he was “an active promoter of and contributor to fascist ideology and anti-Semitic sentiment.”

Manoilescu was foreign minister in 1940, when Romania was allied with Nazi Germany. A supporter of the fascist Iron Guard, he signed a diktat under which Romania lost large swaths of territory to Hungary.